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Fried Turkey

Fried turkey pieces served with a mushroom gravy and lemon.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 34,122 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Fried Turkey

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the turkey

  1. Cut the remains of the turkey into neat pieces.

  2. Make a batter by mixing beaten eggs, fine bread crumbs, pepper, coarse sea salt, pounded mace or nutmeg, and parsley.

  3. Dip the turkey pieces into the batter.

Fry and make the gravy

  1. Fry the pieces until they are light brown.

  2. In a separate pan, make a gravy by thickening with flour and butter.

  3. Flavor the gravy with mushroom or other catsup and pour it over the fried turkey.

Serve

  1. Serve with slices and sliced lemon.

Recipe from a historical cookbook (Internet Archive).

Transcribed from a scanned cookbook and modernised for today's kitchens. Where the book gave no heat or time, or said "a moderate oven", the temperatures and times here may be modern equivalents rather than the book's own figures.

Explore the science

The flavor team

The pairs that carry this dish. Each one is judged two ways: how much their aromas overlap, and how often cooks already put them together.

  1. Pepper + parsleytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  2. Bread + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).

  3. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Turkey + breadtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together822 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  5. Parsley + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together16,675 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Flour and butter barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Eggs
Bind the bread crumb coating so it clings to the turkey pieces.
Fine bread crumbs
Form a crisp, golden coating on the outside of the fried turkey.
Flour
Thickens the gravy so it coats the turkey.
Butter
Adds richness and fat to the gravy along with the flour.
Mushroom catsup
Adds savory, umami depth to the gravy.

The step that matters

Fry the pieces until light brown. Frying in hot fat browns the coating through the Maillard reaction, creating flavor and a crisp texture. Stopping too early leaves the coating pale and soft, while over-frying dries the meat.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (turkey, egg, bread, pepper, parsley, flour, butter):

  1. Nutmegfits better
  2. Thymefits better
  3. Sagefits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against turkey, egg, bread, pepper, parsley, flour, butter. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“What each ingredient does” and “The step that matters” were written by Claude from this recipe’s own method and reviewed in samples by CompKitchen.

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